KillerMuffin
Seraphically Disinclined
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2000
- Posts
- 25,603
Link: http://www.sltrib.com/11152001/utah/148935.htm
The Great Utah Porn Czar is trying to get a bill passed, or will when the Utah legislature opens in January, that will give give its citizens a method of civil redress regarding "Nuisance abatement statutes." Okay, so? All states have them and usually use them to get rid of crack houses, illicit gambling dens, and illegal houses of ill repute. Utah and their morality codes, though, will get to use them against nudie bars, adult book and video outlets, and other assorted sex stuff.
An interesting facet of this moral nuisance legislation is that it contains language that extends to email spam. So, if a Utah citizen is getting tons of email porn spam, then they request that their Internet Service Provider block this porn spam and it isn't blocked, the Utah citizen has an avenue to bring civil action against the ISP.
I find this pretty interesting on a few levels. One of which is that I'd really like the spam to not hit my mailbox. Any of it. However, spammers are a clever group and they know how to phrase things to get it past obscenity filters. How is an ISP to know if the incoming email is obscene spam without opening it? Some of the nastiest spam I've ever gotten only said "Hi!" in the subject line and the address was innocuous enough looking. Is it permissible for an ISP to set a filter in place that looks for certain strings in the content of the email so it can comply with the user's request to block such email? What if the user is having an ongoing love affair with obscene language in it and that sort of thing gets blocked as well?
Thoughts?
The Great Utah Porn Czar is trying to get a bill passed, or will when the Utah legislature opens in January, that will give give its citizens a method of civil redress regarding "Nuisance abatement statutes." Okay, so? All states have them and usually use them to get rid of crack houses, illicit gambling dens, and illegal houses of ill repute. Utah and their morality codes, though, will get to use them against nudie bars, adult book and video outlets, and other assorted sex stuff.
An interesting facet of this moral nuisance legislation is that it contains language that extends to email spam. So, if a Utah citizen is getting tons of email porn spam, then they request that their Internet Service Provider block this porn spam and it isn't blocked, the Utah citizen has an avenue to bring civil action against the ISP.
I find this pretty interesting on a few levels. One of which is that I'd really like the spam to not hit my mailbox. Any of it. However, spammers are a clever group and they know how to phrase things to get it past obscenity filters. How is an ISP to know if the incoming email is obscene spam without opening it? Some of the nastiest spam I've ever gotten only said "Hi!" in the subject line and the address was innocuous enough looking. Is it permissible for an ISP to set a filter in place that looks for certain strings in the content of the email so it can comply with the user's request to block such email? What if the user is having an ongoing love affair with obscene language in it and that sort of thing gets blocked as well?
Thoughts?
